


The Irrational

by Residesatshamecentral



Category: SS-GB (TV)
Genre: Berlin!AU, Implied Love, Poisoning, discussions of character death, tense converations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 22:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11045778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Residesatshamecentral/pseuds/Residesatshamecentral
Summary: Huth is poisoned. Archer can do nothing about it.





	The Irrational

Archer took the precaution of knocking before opening the door. Huth in his present mood was ferocious. The last doctor to have inadvisably opened the door without warning had been found in the hallway, white-faced, as though he had escaped from the jaws of a Bengal tiger rather than been chewed out by a patient.

“Come!” called the horse voice faintly. Archer’s stomach sank slightly. Irascible or not, he had never heard Huth sound so…weak.

( _\- Captain  Dietrich on the slab as he examined the discoloured eyes. The face had been  like a flesh mask, cold, white and slack. He had been muttering nonsense before he died -_ )

He kept his features under strict control and entered the room. Huth insisted on low light and the doctors had complied. A faint bronze glow illuminated the sickbed.

“Well?” grunted the patient. Huth lay in an attitude of total, luxuriating sulkiness. One hand was behind his head, the other thrown out in as though in expansive relaxation. His fingers fidgeted uneasily with the corner of the sheet. “Close the door…the light hurts my eyes.” Archer did. “Sit down…have you got a cigarette?”

“Surprised they let you smoke, sir.” Archer sat down beside the bed.

“They don’t. Have you got one on you?”

Huth’s face in the dull light was a wax mask beaded with sweat. Half his features were in shadow. He played nervously with the cigarette at first as though uncertain what to do with it, then lit it too slowly.

“You are staring at me, you know, Archer.” He took a drag of the cigarette and immediately looked nauseous. “Ah…” he twisted to stub it out in a glass ashtray on the bedside table.

“Sir?” said Archer expressionlessly. It was a good word, could serve as pure punctuation.

“Don’t ‘sir’ me right now Archer, I am not in the mood for it.” There was no anger in Huth’s voice. “You are staring, and you are not as good at controlling you features as you think.” He sank back onto the pillows with reluctance as though it was admitting weakness to do so. At close quarters, he even smelled different. A faint, oddly metallic odour, not exactly unpleasant, but distressingly _wrong_ in its presence.  

The silence stretched out uncomfortably “…Are you not going to explain your staring?” probed Huth eventually. Was he, wondered Archer, deliberately avoiding questions about the investigation? Would he even admit it if he was, for that matter? Huths fingers were restless. They clearly needed something to fiddle with. Doubtless he missed his cane.

Archer took a deep breath. Stared into a corner of the black-and-bronze room. “I can report, sir, that Captain Dietrich died at two o clock this morning.” He stopped. No expression registered on Huth’s features. His eyes were still. “As you know, the Captain was the only other officer to have the fish that day…”

“We both got what we deserved for shared good taste, yes.”

“…And my inquiries into the matter have provided some leads that pointed, I thought, to a mostly non-violent activist group. As I told you, I had thought this was a case of sabotage. The White Rose group -”

“Tacky name” murmured Huth.

“- Have never been suspected of more than minor acts of sabotage. Graffiti on walls, seditious leaflets stuffed into soldiers’ bags, that sort of thing. Either it is _not_ them, or they have been influenced or replaced by far more extreme rebels or their resources are being used by another group.” He stopped. He seemed to himself like a jerky machine, stopping and starting, not of his own accord but according to chance and some unread script.

Huth sat up and slowly passed his hands through his hair. “There are net benefits to us if rebels are in-fighting. Normally we have to go to the trouble of killing them, how nice if they saved us the time.” He showed no signs of fear, none at all.

“The doctors are fully aware of the situation, but they remain unsure of the exact nature of the poison…” Archer was aware he was gabbling a bit.

Huth waved a hand “Nothing you can do but your job, Archer, and you are doing that to your fullest extent I am sure.” His eyes turned on Archer, odd-coloured tunnels in the dim light. Those tunnels seemed to draw him in, pulling him against his will to a strange country of truths he would rather not face. Archer felt light headed. He gripped the edges of the chair unconsciously. “If I die” said Huth softly “- and do not interrupt me with empty assurances – you will have to think of your own position, Archer. Your loyalties will become a liability. You will have to think on your feet. And think fast, the jackals will move in very quickly.”

“I would not-”

“You had _better_ , Archer.” Huth looked longingly at the dead cigarette in the astray. “You had better lie and smile and denigrate my name and do it standing over my dead body if that is what it takes to secure your position. What would I care? The dead do not need loyalty. Even if they did, I am selling you to do this, for yourself. Think of yourself.” He touched Archer’s hand lightly. Just the tips of his fore-and middle- finger, on the back of the hand where it rested on the edge of the table. “Promise me, would you?”

Archer looked at the sick man among the rumpled sheets. Saw the beads of sweat on the collarbone, the open expression that soon passed like a banned idea from the masklike face. The one, cocked eyebrow.

“I promise you sir,” he said carefully “that should you die I will do whatever seems appropriate to me.” A range of expressions flickered across the face then, too fast to be read, almost unnameable.

“You are a fool, Archer.” Almost a purr. A strange, pregnant silence ensued. Neither looked at the other. Archer thought of the jackals waiting, outside the light, prowling for disloyalty. What did his own conscience have to say about Huth? There were no handholds anymore, nothing to grasp in this murky Reich where every road led to violence. He was suspended somewhere in a black sea where up and down were very much the same thing.

So why had he already decided? That was sure enough. Long before Huth had said anything, his own route was laid out, regardless of any rules of right and wrong. A comfort, at least, that some gut feeling had replaced the moral compass.

A doctor opened the door, very cautiously. “Standartenführer…” an irascible Huth was the sort of hazard that spread warnings quickly “…I must request an end to this visit.”

“Time for you to get on anyway.” Huth accompanied the dismissal with a jerk of the head. “Keep me informed. And think over what I said. You may change your mind.”


End file.
